Danny's Corner

Small printer upgrades are still happening. Amazing just how much I can polish a turd. :)

I ordered a handful of 8 diode filters specifically made for TI DRV8825 stepper drivers that are configured for micro stepping. These random, and rather highly specialized little PCBs, fix a rather problematic behavior of the TI chips under circumstances that are common when 3D printing. The original solution was published by a friendly sleuth named cabristor. Which then got copied and sold by the thousands with not even a whiff of who came up with the fix. That sucks. The images on his site were even being direct linked in ads to sell the darn things. He's since taken down his site, which is a shame, but I get it. Me being me, I took a PDF of it for safe keeping and is linked here. Hopefully cabristor comes back online with his website.

I designed and printed up a small bracket that holds the diode filters in place on one of my printers. These diode filters do consume some power and convert it into heat. Luckily, I've got a good sized case fan sending quite a bit of air over them. With these installed, my print quality noticeably improved. There are plenty before and after examples on the internet so I won't dogpile. Safe to say though, if you're running stepper drivers based on TI DRV8825 ICs, are using microstepping, and making slow movements, these are definitely worth looking into.